Releasing the Demons

Villy Sørensen and Svend Åge Madsen in conversation

By : Per Thorsen og Henrik Ljungberg

VS:  Quite a lot of things take you by surprise as an author.  When you write something that´s a work of fiction, and this is why I´ve written relatively little fiction, you set out on an expedition and release some demons that you would really like to have put into some kind of order by the time you reach the end of the road.  And they´ve got their own lives and they play tricks on you;  you can´t control it and often it ends up as something other than you intended at the outset.

SÅM:  Yes.  When you discover that something is actually much finer than you thought yourself capable of, or has greater coherence.

Now, I prefer not read to read my own books, but I experienced that when I read Tugt og utugt i mellemtiden (Virtue and Vice in the Middle Time) in English.  I almost lost myself in it and found myself thinking: æIf only it had been me who ...´.  And in that way I at any rate realise that some of the themes that I think I´ve got a hold on just now, I´ve actually had a hold on before.

So, that writing should be a process of deeper insight is a qualified assertion.  It is certainly an insight that has to be achieved many times.

VS:  Yes, it´s a process that has to be repeated, so that you have the potential to develop it.  We have a certain number of resources at our disposal and we use and re-use them.

SÅM:  The recurrent themes are one thing, but I´ve still  been surprised that I actually have a style.  I remember finding it a problem when I first began to write, the feeling that the great writers have a style.  You knew how Villy Sørensen wrote, I could even imitate the style, maybe not quite at that level, but still.  But I didn´t think I had one. Not until later, when I´d also seen it in reviews - the "Madsenesque style".

VS:  Do you think that your first novels are more an attempt to find a style than they are a manifestation of a style?

SÅM:  If I had a style at that time, then it was that I put together others´ styles.  I did it at the very outset, with Besøget (The Visit) where I put three styles together.  Later on it seems to have become more something that´s characteristic of my work.

VS:  At the same time as you´ve become more classic?

SÅM:  Yes.

VS:  It´s quite true that I felt that I had a style right from the beginning, actually right from when I wrote a novel during my schooldays.  But at the same time I felt that I didn´t know enough to write.  So I started studying philosophy.  It wasn´t until I had been doing that for several years that I began quite spontaneously to write my first stories.

SÅM:  But by then you´d already got, I don´t know what a language teacher would call it, your own linguistic hallmark?
 
Language

VS:  Well, then we´re talking about language as a medium, or whatever we should call it.

DN:  Isn´t it a question of a conscious economy of expression in the language you use in your stories right from the beginning?  A compression?  Accessible, but compact?

VS:  It´s difficult to talk about your own style when it just appeared spontaneously.  In Sære historier (Strange Stories) I tried out old forms of writing, ironically modified it´s true, but still.

DN:  But isn´t it a question of a readiness to respond to the smallest details of language - for example: clichés which we all use, without thinking about it, and which are suddenly invested with fresh vitality when we come across them in Villy Sørensen?  Is that not done consciously?

VS:  It´s not a conscious effect, but it´s part of the whole ongoing process.  And I was opposed to a tradition and a traditional use of language and that lead to a linguistic teasing.  Hans Christian Andersen is an obvious starting point here.  He´s one of the few major writers to use language as something he could play with.  The major novelists don´t do that.

SÅM:  The thing is, it´s not that it´s a form of language one has decided to use, rather it´s something within one´s nature, or wherever.  For example, the irony which we both use - I´m sure we employ it in our everyday lives too.  OK, now I´m generalising.

VS:  I think that´s quite true of both of us.

DN:  Surely sometimes material from real life, seen from a distance, is amusing.  For example, when you tell us about the two books you rewrote as one when you were a child - that´s an episode I remember well from Tilføjelser (Additions), when the Danish teacher thinks it´s "a bloody brilliant idea".  Or in Villy Sørensen where you´ve told us that you directly re-use children´s phrases, a veritable gold mine.  What we take to be invention is actually completely authentic?

VS:  Yes, for example, in Soldatens juleaften (The Soldier´s Christmas) I  wrote about some angels "wearing bare feet".  That´s a child´s remark that I have used.

SÅM:  I think for me it´s to do with a pattern of reaction, my form that is.  I became aware of it recently in Tallinn where I wandered round in the old part of the city even though I had been warned about violence, robbery and whatever.  And, quite right, I meet two nasty-looking blokes who seem to be about to close in on me and my reaction was to straighten myself up, big Northerner that I am, and start going after them.  And that was more than they could take, they slunk off all frightened.  I told this anecdote to a friend and he said, "That´s your style completely".  I could see what he meant, that it´s something I use when I write too.  The unexpected.

In the words of Danish teachers it often comes out as first you plan that you´re going to write something and then you do it, but actually it´s the other way round.

DN:  But don´t you contribute a bit to that bad habit by sometimes, for example, inserting long family-trees or character lists in your books?

SÅM:  Of course I have a plan, but it´s more to do with a number of core points or constellations of characters which are bound to provoke something or other, and I´m just as curious about what happens as the reader hopefully is.
 
"Wait until they turn their backs"

DN:  Is it like that for you too, Villy Sørensen?

VS:  It´s no accident that my stories are as short as they are, they are all written in one go, or divided into sections, as in Apollens oprør (The Revolt of Apollo) which is in 48 sections and I think written in 48 days.

In my longer works it has been a problem to maintain the mood along the way.  Günther Grass, who has written some very long novels, once said that he never finished a day´s work at the end of a chapter, but always began the next one, so there was something in readiness for the next day.

SÅM:  At the same time I think it´s good to get something finished by the end of a day, then my mind works more effectively on what is to come next.  If you stop just before the climax you run the risk that the next day you only have material for an hour´s work, then it´s spent.  But of course you play all sorts of little games on yourself to make sure that it all moves along smoothly, and that´s impossible anyway!

VS:  Do you sometimes try to postpone it?

SÅM:  Not when I´m writing a novel, then I´d rather move steadily on; an interruption of two days and it starts getting very precarious for me.  It´s to do with preserving the mood.  Once you´ve left it, it takes an awful lot of energy to get into it again.

On the other hand, I find it very satisfying when I´m working on a major project that, once I´m in full swing, now and then the work almost flows by itself for a day or two.

VS:  Yes, that´s not something one experiences in the more philosophical genres I have often worked in.

DN:  You´ve said something which Per Højholt has also touched on:  if there is something particular that you absolutely must write, then you can´t.  It has to come like a thief in the night, as it were, behind your back.  Per Højholt has some quite beautiful descriptions of how he´s almost on his way out with his pitchfork when suddenly he grabs a pencil and starts scribbling.  What reaches the paper before one´s consciousness gets hold of one´s hand - he can use that.  Do you recognise that?

SÅM:  It´s true that there´s an awful lot that can´t be forced, that has to be coaxed.  But as soon as it becomes a procedure it doesn´t work any more.

I have, for example, on a number of occasions, cleared both my desk and my mind and got on the train with a good book, and then the ideas come tumbling.  Sit down almost expectant with pencil and paper and there´s nothing there.

VS:  I once used the expression: "I´ve just got to wait until they turn their backs."  There mustn´t be too much supervision.

Somewhere you have an author who´s called Villads Sayer and he has quite simply become too clever.  He´s only written two books - and that was when he didn´t know anything.
SÅM:  I´ve thought about that in relation to you;  that it must have made it harder for you to write, as you know too much.
 
Per Thorsen og Henrik Ljungberg: Frisættelse af dæmonerne in the magazine Dansk Noter 2, 1996Dansklærerforeningen/FFS

Translated by Gaye Kynoch